I’m going to be brutally honest with myself and you, gentle reader, and come clean here. Folks, while I consider myself a fan of Belgium’s Rise and Fall, self-reflection regarding my actions during their last seven years of existence illustrate that I may not be as big a fan as I thought I might be. Their Into Oblivion album from 2005 is pretty awesome. The follow-up four years down the line, Our Circle is Vicious, was even awesome-er. In the meantime, while I have interviewed them – maybe it was for Decibel, maybe it was for someone else. Damn, I can’t remember. Damn, I suck - I’ve gone out of my way and made the effort to witness the Ghent quartet a grand total of zero times. This, despite the fact the in that time, they’ve embarked upon at least two full American tours and even though I don’t live your United States, those tours have taken them within 45 minutes to an hour of where I usually rest my weary head come sundown. Maybe my engine of interest will be sparked to more tangible action with the release next week of the band’s fourth album, Faith.
I will always possess a soft spot for bands that play metallic hardcore with a reckless abandon, dark evilosity and charred emotions. Maybe this time around I’ll be a bit more supportive of the Belgians than my usual sitting around and thinking about how awesome they are. Maybe I’ll tell someone. Like in a blogpost. For the blog accompanying a popular monthly metal magazine. A popular magazine that people all over the fucking place read. Sure, why not?

Check out the description for the first video from the album, “Hidden Hands”:"On a sunny sunday morning in October last year we invited close to 30 of our friends to our practice space in Ghent for the shoot of the first ever Rise And Fall music video. We didn't invite them to act like they were the crowd or anything, no, we invited them to be Rise And Fall.

From 8 in the morning 'till sunset, footage was shot of our friends pretending they were Rise And Fall. It resulted in 8 hours of footage which was later distilled into a 112 seconds long video by director Mathieu Vandekerckhove who also filmed the whole project. All this hard work, and sweat (we kept the heat at full blast in our practice space), resulted in a visual and auditive whirlwind that will commence after you hit play. Turn it up loud, watch it full screen and in HD if possible! We wanna thank everyone in the video and especially Mr. Vandekerckhove who spent hours on end editing this bastard.

Look for members of Oathbreaker, Congress, Hessian, Reproach, Kindred, Amenra, Kingdom, Blind To Faith, Insult, Inhume, The Rott Childs, Kabul Golf Club, Kapitan Korsakov, Drums Are for parades, Minor Thieves, Vermin Twins, Officer Jones, Morrocan, Control Records, Rhythm To The Madness, Justice, Filler, Joshua's Song,... all bands we advise you to check out and find out what's going on in Belgium in 2012. Thank you."

And here's the vid:

Now that you're done doing that, check out an exclusive preview of another Faith track, “The Gallows Await”:

Here are some tour dates that I won’t be attending, not because I’ve already reneged on turning over a new leaf as far as supporting Rise and Fall is concerned, but because these shows are nowhere near me.